Barbara Spiecker

Barbara Spiecker (she/her/hers) is a marine community ecologist who is broadly interested in scale-dependent responses of marine communities across space and time.

Her research focuses on:

  1. Identifying underlying mechanisms that produce complex multi-scale responses of benthic communities and how these mechanisms and responses affect ecosystem-level processes from the bottom up.
  2. Using data from long-term monitoring programs to address pressing ecological issues, identify biological patterns across ecosystems, and provide practical solutions to common data-related issues surrounding these programs.
Portrait image of Barbara Spiecker in field study.
Photo Credit: Song Hoa Choi.

Alongside her research, she is actively involved with science communication and community outreach. She co-founded a non-profit organization called Atomic Hands. The organization’s mission is to foster curiosity in STEM through American Sign Language-centric resources, empower the signing community to develop and deliver engaging STEM topics, and encourage networking among deaf STEMists.